New option for Alaska's back pains.

• Author: Pilkington, Steve
• Position: HEALTH & MEDICINE

Dr. Timothy Cohen, a neurosurgeon with Anchorage Neurological Associates, is the first physician in Alaska, and one of the first in the Northwest, to offer artificial disc implantation as a treatment for patients suffering from back pain due to disc degeneration.

Artificial replacements are commonly used in hips and knees, but this is the first U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of such a device for spinal discs. It was approved in October 2004. Cohen performs this procedure only at Alaska Regional Hospital.

The artificial disc was created to...